Prof. Sam Lehman-Wilzig: In the AI Era, Does College Still Pay? (Pun Intended)
(Note: This topic is so important, and fast-moving, that I decided to return to, and significantly update, it here – two and a half years after I last addressed it: https://israelseen.com/prof-sam-lehman-wilzig-is-college-necessary-in-a-high-tech-world/)
If you have teenage or young adult grand/children, they are surely asking: Is it still worth going to college?
For everyone, but especially youngsters (Gen Z and Gen Alpha), AI is economically intimidating given its “intellectual” capabilities. Computer programmers, financial service workers, and other similar white-collar wannabees are already finding it difficult to gain entry-level jobs. The result: many young people are skipping college and jumping straight into blue collar training: trades like plumbing, electrical work, construction, and all sorts of relatively complex hands-on jobs.
In my post-retirement work as a half-time Professor of Communications (Peres Academic Center, Rehovot), I’ve had students turning to me for advice. Here’s what I tell them: “it’s complicated.”
First, college is expensive. In America, insanely so; in Israel, where salaries overall are significantly lower, private college tuition is far cheaper but still relatively “expensive”: around 30,000 shekels ($10,000) a year (a B.A. is three intensive years in Israel; four less concentrated years in most overseas countries; tuition at Israel’s public universities are very low – about $4000 a year!). On the other hand (another intended pun; haven’t yet seen AI successfully punning), blue collar training programs are shorter, cheaper, and the trainee starts working (and earning!) much faster – quite important in Israel where students start their professional career later, given their prior 2 or 3-year army service. Thus, for many people, especially those from families where money’s tight, foregoing a B.A. degree feels like the obvious move.
Second, and perhaps more important from a long-term perspective, are the next generation’s future professional prospects. AI seems to be slowly but inexorably taking over almost all white-collar work, especially lower and middle echelon positions. For example, Amazon recently fired 14,000 middle managers; this past week Oracle announced its intention to let go 20-30,000 workers in order to fund increased AI infrastructure; in Israel, the last year saw a sharp drop in junior high-tech positions (even veteran workers, ages 36–45, have also seen a significant rise in unemployment). Looking towards the future and given the pace of AI improvement, few “brain” positions seem to be safe. To be sure, there is still work today for the true creatives, but even in this we are finding AI already functioning at a practical level (writing poetry and fiction; producing useful art and video, functionally abstracting long documents; etc.).
So, if such work seems to be going out the door, why not turn to hands-on type of work? There are even two more advantages: such work doesn’t keep you glued to a desk all day with all the negative health entailed in such lengthy sitting on our backside; there’s even lots of pride in building, repairing, and seeing actual results. Moreover, these jobs are finally gaining some social respect as the public has started to realize how essential are skilled trades. Such labor isn’t just a fallback anymore; it’s a valued, legitimate, working career path.
Sounds good, no? Unfortunately, this mindset suffers from a misunderstanding of the breadth of the threat. Whereas “intellectual” AI has taken off, “physical” AI is not all that far behind. In a word: AI robots. There are already robots that move like humans and can perform relatively complex movements such as packaging as well as picking up, putting down, and turning objects. In research labs, robots are being developed that have fine touch sensation almost as good as humans (smell too!). There are robotic prototypes for plumbing, electricity robots, and automated “intelligent” farming tools. So if you’re starting out in a trade, within a few years you’ll be facing competition not just from other skilled workers, but from machines that are getting smarter and nimbler by the year.
Moreover, it’s not only manufacturing jobs at risk; service workers such as taxi drivers are being pushed out with the advent of driverless cabs (e.g., Waymo, already servicing several U.S. cities). Indeed, earlier this week Israel’s Transport Ministry approved a supervised autonomous-driving trial (https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/israel-news/2507006/israel-authorizes-tesla-autonomous-driving-trial-under-human-supervision.html). Think of postal workers, and how email and social media have already decimated their ranks.
What are the consequences for the future of employment? The jury is still out. On the one hand, this scenario has played out several times throughout history, with new technologies disemploying entire professions but simultaneously opening up brand new types of work, usually even more lucrative. From hunter-gatherers we became farmers; from farming we moved to manufacturing; from the factory we moved to service offices; and from services we morphed into information workers. It’s possible that AI and robotics will similarly open up brand new professional avenues that we can only dimly see today.
On the other hand, each of these past economic revolutions entailed a greater use of intellect. But what happens when AI’s “brainpower” surpasses that of humans? Where can we “jump up” to for the next economic stage? No easy answers are at hand, especially when it is clear that AI’s capabilities will only continue to grow and expand.
So how should we plan for the future? What should we tell our children and grandchildren to do? For that matter, what should institutions of higher education do to prepare the next generation for the (potential) economic and professional tsunami? I’ll offer several practical and policy ideas in my blog post next week – even answering the question I started with: Is it still worth going to college?
Stay tuned…
